We live, simultaneously, in two different worlds. Ultimately, we live in the World of Nature, a world that we did not create and the world upon which all life depends. Most immediately, we inhabit a "human world" that we create ourselves. Because our human world is the result of our own choices and actions, we can say, quite properly, that we live, most immediately, in a “political world.” In this blog, I hope to explore the interaction of these two worlds that we call home.

About Me

Gary A. Patton

I was an elected official in Santa Cruz County, California for twenty years, from 1975 to 1995. Now, I am an environmental attorney, practicing law in Santa Cruz County. If you would like to contact me, send me an email at gapatton@mac.com.

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Tuesday, April 3, 2012

#94 / Environmental Law And Policy

Today, I am starting to teach a course in Environmental Law and Policy, at the University of California at Santa Cruz, filling in for Professor Tim Duane, who is teaching at the Seattle University School of Law this Quarter.

According to the official syllabus, the course will “focus on environmental laws in the context of the legal institutions that determine and implement the law. Particular attention will be paid to the interactions among and between the three branches of government in the American legal system: the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. The course will also illuminate how the three different “levels” of government in our system – the federal, state, and local levels of government – interact with respect to environmental law. The course will mostly focus on the federal environmental laws that have dominated environmental policy in the United States since the period during which most of them were adopted, from 1969-1973. While the “political” forces that have driven and drive the adoption of legislative enactments will not be extensively examined, the importance of “politics” in determining the legal force of legislation will play a role in our analysis of what has come to be called “environmental law.” A main emphasis in the course will be on seeing how environmental law is implemented through a dynamic interpretation and reinterpretation of legislative and regulatory enactments, in the context of politically‑sensitive administrations, courts, and legislatures."

What I am really hoping will come across, to the fifty or so students in the course, is this basic thought: "laws" are the rules we establish for ourselves, to guide our own actions, and it is imperative that we develop and follow human-created laws that will show appropriate respect for the "laws" of Nature (the environment) upon which all of our works depend.